and the vicious, idiotic Cuban Republican "exile" Congressman from Miami, which receives around 30,000,000 annually for producing and staffing and running both TV and Radio Marti, Lincoln Diaz-Balart attacked him in his own state's press after telling him he would destroy every project Skaggs found near and dear.
He took out advertising in Colorado pointing out how Skaggs was responsible for losing some big money projects, and attacking him, and Skaggs lost his next election and got out of politics.{blockquote]7/1/93 After having funds for Radio and TV Marti deleted in a closed mark-up session, the House Appropriations Committee restores funds for Radio Marti but not TV Marti (CAC, 6/22/93; CM, 6/25/93; MH, 6/25/93). Rep. Diaz-Balart succeeds in cutting $23 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in an effort to repay Rep. David Skaggs (D-CO) for cutting $17.5 million from Radio and TV Marti. Rep. Skaggs complains, "I was greatly disturbed and saddened that the normal business of this House was subject to these retributive tactics. This is an example of how difficult it is to pull the plug on a program, even one as ineffective as this one."
Skaggs believes the programs are unnecessary because Cubans are able to view commercial broadcasts from Florida. http://cuban-exile.com/doc_126-150/doc0146b.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Washington Post
Monday, February 21, 2000; Page A02
Rifts in Hard Line on Cuba
~snip~
"You know that if you kick the Cuba issue, you're going to have a bad
day," said former representative David Skaggs (D-Colo.), who clashed
with the hard line on Havana, and paid for it with lost funding for his
district. "Other than to about 10 members, it doesn't matter that much.
when there are a few people who will die for the issue, and nobody
else gets anywhere close to that, they can have their way."
(snip)
The general public pays little attention to Cuba issues, said Skaggs, who
joined the Aspen Institute after his 1998 retirement from Congress. But
with the Elian case, he said, the public may have realized that the
hard-liners are "out of sync" with their values. "Maybe this will start to
contribute to some diminishment of their authority generally on Cuba
matters."
(snip)
Those who antagonize the foundation can expect a quick response. The
morning after Skaggs succeeded in temporarily killing funds for TV Marti
in July 1993, he was confronted by an angry Diaz-Balart who, Skaggs said
in an impassioned floor speech that afternoon, threatened "that if I followed
through with my plans, he would do all he could to go after everything he
could find that was important to me."
That same day, Diaz-Balart used a parliamentary "point of order" to ax
millions in federal funds for Skagg's Colorado district, as the foundation
was faxing a gloating press release detailing the maneuver, and the reason
for it, to every major newspaper in the state.
"We only go after people who come after us," Jose Cardenas, the
foundation's Washington director, said in a recent interview.
(snip/...)
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/us-cuba/rifts.htm
Utter assholes.